FINDING
THE SOUL
OF
NATURAL
BUILDING
Tom Bender © 28 June 1998
Do places have
souls?
There is life in all Creation. There are wombs in space that give
birth to galaxies and stars. The hearts of stars sing like bells. The rocks
under our feet thrumm with messages from within and around the world. Trees
make love with a thousand others at the same time. Microfauna in our cells
create communities and transportation systems. Communities have personalities.
A forest is a single organism. Planets have consciousness. And they all
sing together in harmonious celebration of life.
Places, even, do have souls. Small or great, gentle or fierce, nurturing
or debilitating. Like all life, they have distinct and often strong personalities.
They have auras, and energy bodies. They are touched and altered by our
regard or disregard of them, and they are able to move our hearts and alter
our live. They can enrich and nurture us, empower and connect us.
In their most powerful form, places connect us into, and allow us to coexist
in, the non-material planes of existence as well as the material one. With
them, we can individually or as a group expand our conscious presence into
some of those other realms. Most simply put, making places with souls is
the most central thing we must attend to in making buildings to shelter
our lives and nurture our hearts.
We have been able to learn in recent years how to create places which can
achieve such things. When all the pieces are right, everyone who enters
such places breathes a sigh of relief and happiness. Their legs get rubbery
and they want to sit down and just soak in the energy. Such places are filled
with a powerful silence. They connect us to the rest of Creation. They nurture
us with the breath of life. They are the soul of natural building and the
goal to which it leads.
INTENTION
There are many aspects to places with soul. One of the most important
is intention. All of our surroundings are like mirrors, reflecting
back to us the intention that has gone into their making and use - the values
of their makers. If made from greed, if made to deceive, they convey that.
If they come from a meanness of soul or smallness of spirit, they infuse
us with that essence. If made with love, with generosity, with honoring
of all life, they support and evoke the same intentions in our own lives.
Clarity, strength, and rightness of intention also bring life force energy,
or chi, into a place, with its ability to nurture our lives. The nature
of our intention - whether in making or using a place - reflects that same
energy back into our own lives, enhancing or weakening our own energy.
Even more, our intention towards a place can totally change the lives of
others. Out of an intention of making a Head Start Center good for the kids
using it, we asked ourselves what would make us feel best if we were kids
coming in the door. "The smell of good food!" was the unanimous
response. This lead us to put the kitchen right in the middle of the building,
open to all the classrooms and entry. It works wonderfully, giving immediate
pleasure and sense of rightness to those coming in the door. It also gives
parents a place to stop for a cup of coffee and a chat, and to peek around
the corner to see how their kids are doing. It allows the cook to be an
extra friend and source of snacks and hugs for the kids, and a backup pair
of eyes for the teachers.
What we didn't realize until later, is how much our intention totally changed
working as a cook in this place! Cooking is usually a "back-room"
job, tucked away out of sight in service areas near the loading dock. In
contrast, putting the cook in the middle of everything, and in contact
with everyone, made them a whole-person part of what went on!
An architect later asked what we would do if the center was larger and needed
a bigger kitchen and loading dock. I looked at him and said, "You've
just defined too big!" A change in intention - from wholeness
and people-centeredness to optimizing mechanical function - underlies our
gut feeling of wrongness when something becomes too big.
Just as aproaching building on the level of different intention can change
the lives of people using our places, it can be empowering to the people
making them. Materials that can be obtained locally, and which can be put
together with "sweat equity" of the owners instead of bank loans
encourage a sense of accomplishment for the owner/builders, provide opportunity
for enrichment rather than standardization, and avoid the ecological costs
of transportation and industrialized processing. The intention to empower
brings forth a need for the natural building materials being rediscovered
and refined today.
Even working with architects and professional builders, there are ways of
empowering people doing the building, if we make that part of our intention.
I began several years ago to add a "1% for Heart" section to my
specifications, to pay for suggestions from the workers on improving the
spirit of the building. It has ended up encouraging the workers to think
creatively about everything they do in the building, resulting in
many wonderful touches without any additional cost!
Without a clear and positive intention, ugly and uncomfortable buildings
can be made using natural building materials just as easily as wonderful
and satisfying ones. Having the goal of a place with a soul, we give direction
and destination to our powerful engine of creativity in building. That intention
guides not just choice of materials but the shapes and spaces created out
of them, the means used to warm and cool the occupants, the connections
made with the rest of nature and the values expressed in the building. Unconsciously
or consciouisly, I think most of the people working with natural building
materials are seeking that soul of place. And it is that intention as much
as, and in combination with, the materials themselves that we respond to
with an emotional sense of rightness.
Our deep and unconscious cultural values can channel even our most 'obvious'
actions into results that are diametrically at odds with our original intentions.
Attached solar greenhouses, invented for food production for low income
families have metamorphized into hot tub sunrooms on the homes of the wealthy.
Water conservation measures developed a generation ago during a California
drought were immediately offset by increased water consumption from the
proliferation of hot tubs. Twenty-five years after learning how to cut in
half the energy and resource consumption in residential construction, we're
now building houses that are twice as large for a population that is twice
as large, and in the process consuming twice the total energy and resources
as before!
Alternatives to conventional residential construction such as steel framing,
straw bale, or earth construction might in the short run reduce the rate
of logging our forests. They transfer our impacts onto other resources,
which might give some short-term relief. But instead of enduring reduction
in our ecological impacts, by itself it is more likely over time to leave
us with twice the population, fewer resources, and fewer opportunities for
releasing resources out of our operating patterns to finance a transition
to sustainability.1 The
likelihood of major reduction in our material quality of life would then
be far greater.
What we need to remember is that we seem inevitably to spend all the money
we get - on one thing or another. Every dollar we save on materials or energy
use in a building is somehow spent on something else - a bigger house,
vacations, a new car, an education, or just paying the bills. As those same
dollars 2ripple around
the economy, they end up using up pretty much similar amounts of energy
and resources as before. (The only apparent out seems to be earning less
or investing in renewable resources.)
We need to focus our primary attention on the root causes of resource impacts
- our cultural values of greed and growth.3 Until we let loose of our irrational belief that geometric
expansion of our numbers and our appetites can continue in a finite world,
any "eco-building" is only a band-aid. True "eco-building"
involves whether and how much we build and the values
from which we work, as well as how we build.
It is possible to let go of the values of greed, growth, and violence.
When we do, we discover many unexpected benefits. And once we do, we begin
to see that better building techniques can mean lower costs, which can mean
fewer hours of paid work we need to do and more freedom we can have to turn
both our work and leisure into more rewarding patterns. It can release the
resources to generously meet the needs of other people and other life, and
to restore richness and love back into our surroundings.
CHI
I briefly mentioned chi, or life force energy, above relative
to what our intention can do. Chi is another part of the soul of place that
we are rediscovering today. A central part of the philosophy, healing arts,
and operation of society in most cultures worldwide, it is today becoming
acknowledged in our own culture. It underlies acupuncture, faith healing,
feng shui, martial arts, yoga and a variety of other practices. Combined
with intention, it forms the subtle energy template upon which our material
world takes shape in its many wonderful variations. It is vital to supporting
our physical as well as emotional and spiritual health. It is blocked by
artificial building materials, intensive use of electromagentic devices,
and cultural practices based on taking from others.
We're learning today that in addition to locating good natural power spots
of chi to locate our buildings on, that chi energy can be called in, enhanced
and worked with by individual intention and group ritual, and that it forms
the glue which keeps a community healthy. We're discovering the connections
with the spirit world inherent in a chi-based environment, and how places
can be made specifically to work with individual and community chi and to
act as access points to the spirit world.
The power which this energy and this connection to other dimensions of existence
give our places is astounding. We see now how places like the Khmer capital
of Angkor in Cambodia were designed to access energy and wisdom from the
spirit world and convey it to all parts of the kingdom to enhance the well-being
of the entire country.
DISEASES OF THE SPIRIT
The truly rampant diseases in our culture are not of the body, but are
diseases of the spirit. They arise from lack of self-esteem and mutual
respect, being of value to our community, or finding meaning in our lives.
They find expression in rape, substance abuse, addictions, violence, crime,
obesity, isolation, depression and dispair - things possible in any culture,
epidemic in ours. They arise from the root violence in our deepest cultural
values.
Healing diseases of the spirit requires that we nurture, not neglect, the
emotional and spiritual well-being of all. This requires in our surroundings
the honoring of the materials, the elements and forces of nature, the rhythms
and cycles of life, and limiting our wants to not prevent the fulfillment
of other forms of life. These are all possibilities inherent in natural
building materials, used with reverence.
GIVING
In a culture rooted in taking from others and keeping things to ourselves,
the act of giving is a powerfully transformative deed. Expressed in the
shaping and use of our surroundings, it becomes the embodiment of the spirit
needed for sustainability as individuals and as a culture. Giving enriches
places through what we discover can benefit other people or other life in
the process of building. Shading, or giving the scent and beauty of flowers
to adjacent public areas; allowing pedestrian ways to cut through large
projects, giving low walls that can be seating, or facilities that can be
used by the community when not needed by the primary users are all gifts.
Providing habitat for birds, spiders, bats, and butterflies; restoring creeks
and watersheds, providing wildlife migration routes, are all forms of giving,
as is restraining our building to allow room for the rest of nature to life
unthreatened. A place may well achieve that generosity of spirit in surprising
ways - like a Japanese room, which is generous in space because of its emptiness,
not because of its size. Generosity is created out of the love and energy
put into making. It gives the unexpected.
Another and wonderful form of giving is honoring or celebrating
elements of nature and life in what we make. Honoring is a giving of respect.
Celebrating is a giving of thanks. A building with a soul honors its surroundings,
and the lives of materials which were given up to make its existence possible.
We can honor the materials by allowing their history, beauty, and power
to come through their use in ways that move our hearts. A building with
a soul honors the skill, competence, and the sacredness of the work gone
into its making. It acomplishes that honoring through transforming the work
of building to develop and exercise - rather than minimize - skills, and
by providing opportunity for creativity within the work.
A place with a soul can honor our inner resources as well as our material
ones. It is amazing the wonderful places that can be created from will,
courage, endurance, giving, love, curiousity, passion, joy, wit, wonder,
gratitude and forgiveness (to name a few) rather than merely wood and stone.
A place with a soul honors its users, like the Japanese placing a guest
before a tokonoma, giving them a sense that they and their activities are
of value. In respecting building tradition it honors the insights and wisdom
gained by the past. By planting trees, or other means, it honors a hope
for a future. It celebrates newness, age, death, creativity, and and its
neighbors. It honors all life, and the power that begets it. It may honor
our inner nature by removing the wall-to-wall mirrors in our bathrooms that
bring us face to face every morning with our most rumpled and hung-over
exteriors. It may honor and celebrate the sanctity of all Creation through
the making of shrines and sacred places to acknowledge, focus, and make
visible our holding things sacred.
A building with a soul fills primal psychic needs - for protection, for
warmth, for companionship, for meaning. It enfolds and gives refuge and
sanctuary to all who enter it. It welcomes us with water in the desert,
a warm fire in the winter, shelter in the rain; food and fellowship everywhere.
It moves our hearts, and enhances our chi. It helps us marshal our
inner resources and stimulates us to use those resources for growth. It
affirms sacredness and meaning in our lives and surroundings, and
creates places for our hearts and minds as well as our bodies. A building
with a soul draws on and connects its users to power extending beyond just
the material world.
JOINING THE COMMUNITY OF LIFE
A building with a soul is enriched and given meaning through its connection
with other things. It brings us into closer touch with each other, the rest
of the world and the rhythms of nature. By opening our places to sunrise
and moonset, it connects us to the daily and seasonal cycles of the sun,
the moon, and the stars; to the beauty of rain, fog and snow; and to the
visible and invisible universe. It adapts readily to changes in use and
additions to its structure.
Every place has evolved distinct communities of life singularly tied to
the specific qualities of that place which have evolved through the on-going
testing of centuries. Until we learn to nestle our lives into those distinct
ecological communities, to celebrate the specialness of snow and ice, of
rain or dryness, the abundance or sparseness of life, or the change or changelessness
that is characteristic of each different place, we remain as awkward outsiders.
We stumble around foolishly - unintentionally disrupting, wasting, and destroying
through our every act, while failing to receive the ease, reward and plenitude
that lies in being an integral part of the wholeness of a place.
Taking part directly ourselves in building our places, bringing materials
from local sources, learning the real costs of what we create and what we
destroy, brings us in touch with that local community in ways impossible
with power tools, transported materials, and professional design and construction.
It teaches us directly, not intellectually, the importance of nurturing
the health of all Creation, and how vitally important that is for the health
of what lies on both sides of our skins.
A building with a soul fits its site and makes best use of it, making almost
magic connections between location, relationships, and views. The arrangement
and organization within it, outside it, and in connection with the life
around it are apt. It fits its climate, its use and users, and the dreams
that drive their society. It fits the capabilities, beauty and aptness of
local materials, local ways of building, local traditions of design, and
local patterns of living. It chooses local wisdom for dealing with its unique
climatic conditions and ways of heating, cooling, ventilating and sheltering.
It touches the spirit of where it is. It helps us make where we are
paradise.
RIGHT DURATION
Because it is loved, a building with a soul often endures beyond the
needs of its makers to become a gift to future generations. A cathedral
lasting twenty generations, or a bridge lasting twenty centuries can give
back far more than the effort put in their making. Such endurance immeasurably
alters the per-generation cost of resources and work gone into creating
our communities. Durability thus grants a generousity to the places we make
that can be obtained in few other ways. A building with a soul needs to
be as comfortable a thousand years in the past or future as it is today.
It needs to be comfortable with the changes of time, neglect, and love -
mellowing and becoming enriched rather than tarnished and tattered. There
is a hoary strength and a nourishing peacefulness in the timeless qualities
of a building that truly fits our hearts and spirits.
Yet everything does not benefit from lasting longer than its nature. Enbalming
the bodies of our dead and keeping them isolated from returning as new richness
of life impoverishes both our soils and our spirits. To scatter the ashes
of our dead to nurture new life truly and incomparably ties us into the
life of our home places.
A generation from now we may not wish that some of the things that
we have recently created had lasted beyond their time and intention. It
may be good that our homes or vehicles are durable. It may not be desireable
that our foods or some of our building materials are preserved with poisons
that linger and harm. In India, walking along a single country road we can
be surrounded by the ghosts and ruins of untold centuries and dynasties
of building. In Rome, a builder or an artist might be inspired by the accumulations
of centuries of the greatest achievements of their society. Or they might
find those achievements too lofty a yardstick against which to have their
own work measured and not even begin to discover what they themselves could
create anew.
It is good that some things last and that some things do not persist, making
room for each generation and individual to forge anew the understandings
and relationships of a meaningful life. The Inuit who throws away a scrimshaw
carving once the empowering act of creation is finished, or the Balinese
village or Indian pueblo that returns imperceptibly to the earth when its
use is finished holds a rightness of duration and of material choice. Deeply
knowing the nature and value of all the materials we work with, and finding
the right duration for each of our creations is one of the roots of wisdom
needed for being a true part of the ever evolving creation of life.
THE WEB OF RELATIONSHIPS
It is important, as we learn the wisdom of material choice and greater
goals to which we assemble them into new creations, to follow far and deeply
the web of significance of each of our choices, and to sink deep into the
earth the roots of our own understanding. Today, for example, many counsel
us to avoid all use of wood in construction because of its impact on our
forests. And it may be truly wise to use less wood and to find more locally
appropriate materials in lands where trees are not the dominant form of
life.
But wood is a wonderful, natural material. Our demands today are
limitless and beyond the capacity of any resource to satisfy. Reasonable
demands can be supplied by wood, earth, stone or other materials which are
appropriately obtained and appropriate to the use. And to not build with
wood in our region, which is wood as far as the eye can see,
feels not to be honoring the rightful and abundant life of the place.
Listen carefully to the assertions made by others today regarding "better"
use of materials. Find the intentions that those assertions arise from,
and which we inadvertantly accept and support when we choose to follow their
lead. Some advocate, for example, the dominant use of "engineered"
wood - wood I-beams made of pieces of chopped up trees glued together. While
these may be excellent materials for certain applications, their broader
implications can be more troubling. Compared to a beam and decking floor
system, actual wood savings may be very little4, and the beam and decking system (not necessarily old-growth)
results in a finished floor and ceiling that retain and deepen their beauty
over the years without requiring carpet, gypboard ceilings, or paint.
And total banning of the use of wood contains a deeper ill. Excluding it
from our lives amounts to shunning - the harshest punishment conceiveable
in some cultures. When a person is shunned, others totally ignore their
existence and act as if they are not present. It is a true exclusion from
community, and a deep punishment indeed. To ignore wood in this way, to
shun it, to exclude it from our lives is to ensure its death not the restoration
of its health and abundance.
To ensure its well-being, we need to to the opposite - not use it more,
but use it differently - with honor. We need to use it in ways that
reveal its wonder, to use it in ways that our hearts are moved by its wonderful
nature, to use it in ways that we love it so much that we demand and ensure
the survival and health of our forests.
Japan has built almost totally with wood for a thousand years, and has maintained
the wellbeing of its forests. In Japan you can find doors made of a single
slab of wood showing five hundred years of growth rings. You can find buildings
with whole trees, not sawn timbers, used for posts and beams. You can find
a veranda made with only two planks - sawn through the center of the tree
so you walk the life and growth of the tree as you walk the length of the
veranda. You find wood honored and celebrated, and used with love, care,
and restraint.
A complete library on natural building materials would include books on
using wood and other materials well - not just on the technical use
of various materials but on using them with honor, joy and love!
SIMPLICITY
A building with a soul takes a simple and modest route rather than a
complicated one to fulfilling our needs. It lets nature do the work rather
than machines. It finds simple answers to needs (with complex reasons why
they work so well) rather than complicated high-tech ones. It knows that
excess is as harmful as meagerness, and discriminates between things that
harm and those that enhance our abilities, our relationships, and our lives.
INVISIBILITY
Like a good servant, a building with a soul fulfills our needs without
calling attention to itself. Its making and its use pay attention to important
inner qualities rather than superficial outer ones. It demands little in
the way of resources and attention for its creation, operation and maintenance.
It is filled with the emptiness of Lao Tsu's teacup, and reverberates
with the peace of silence. It is free of unnecessary possessions
and mechanical noises, and open to the joyful sounds of birdsong, laughter,
and the sound of the wind. It draws back into shadow, letting the light
and attention rest on its inhabitants and their partners in Creation. It
has learned restraint and simplicity, and the ability to say, "No."
COHERENCE
A building with a soul is consistent and arises out of a single, whole,
and clear vision of the needs it can fill and the possibilities it can unfold.
It reflects a lucid and unencumbered intention of its owner, designer,
and builder. It has sought and found the heart of the institution it is
sheltering, and found ways to honor and unfold that heart in its making.
The issues it has addressed are fundamental and not frivolous, and the solutions
it has created are sound.
LOVE
Most simply put, a building with a soul is one that is built from love.
* * *
THE SOUL OF NATURAL BUILDING
The value, to me, of natural building materials,
is that they are means which can help us find and touch the soul of making
of place. In honoring their individual and natural character, we reach out
and contact other forms of life. With them, we can express our sensual love
of the nature of living materials. Through them, we can learn and share
the wider wisdom of nature and align our own intentions with that of the
ongoing evolution of Creation. With them, and with the depth and power of
intention they bring us home to, we can create joyful places with souls,
places of power, gardens for our spirits and cities of passion.
With them, we are drawn into the inner processes of nature, and can rediscover
ways to collaborate with natural patterns to warm and cool, shelter and
connect, nurture and challenge our lives to achieve their greatest potentials.
With them, we can relearn that simple and wise building can accomplish far
more than complicated and isolated technologies. With them, we can begin
to make safe places within which our own hearts can open, join with others,
and flourish.
TOM BENDER
38755 Reed Rd.
Nehalem OR 97131 USA
503-368-6294
© 28 June 1998
tbender@nehalemtel.net